She wiped at her cheeks.
She needed a plan to work her way out of Confluence. She’d start with the newsroom. Go to work and figure out what came next.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lucy stuck around the newsroom with Reuben, both of them the only staff left at the station. Everyone else had either gone off on various assignments or disappeared upstairs to rub elbows with the network executives.
The time for the press conference to start came and went.
Lucy didn’t attend.
Will needed to focus, and the last thing he needed was his ex-girlfriend distracting him. That’s what she’d told herself anyway.
After the announcement and questions, they would have a big VIP party for the Crestone executives. Lucy wouldn’t be there, either. She would hang out in the newsroom and help the night producer once the stories came in. Perhaps she and Reuben could order a pizza. He’d taken it personally upon himself to teach her inappropriate jokes. Maybe she’d even laugh today. It beat sulking at home.
She rose to grab the scripts off of the printer.
The phone rang. Reuben grabbed the receiver.
The police scanner crackled. She turned it up. “Car two five. Dispatch. Car two five. Attend six-five-four Rivers Drive for multiple reports of animal—”
“Lucy?” Reuben called from across the newsroom.
Lucy clicked off the scanner and rolled the chair away from her desk so she could see him. “What’s up?”
“We’ve got a situation.” Reuben placed the phone back in the cradle. “An alligator’s loose in the river.”
Lucy shook her head dramatically. “I’m sorry. For a second I thought you said there was an alligator in the river.”
Reuben didn’t laugh. “That’s what I said.”
“Quit joking around.” She rolled back to her desk.
“It’s not a joke.”
Okay, so he was being totally serious.
“How would an alligator get in the Colorado River? Don’t they need salt water?” She stood and propped an arm against the side of her cubicle.
“No idea. But a guy apparently lost an alligator—some kind of zoo transport. We just got a tip that it’s in the river.”
“Am I being punked?” She glanced around the empty room. Stranger things had happened on slow days in the newsroom.
“If you are, then I am. All the media is at your boyfriend’s press conference, so we could get the exclusive if we hustle.”
Her heart dropped at the mention of her “boyfriend.”
“We could totally scoop them. Who do you want to send?” Reuben asked.
“No one.” She didn’t want to call down a reporter. It would raise eyebrows if she pulled any of them away. The other news outlets in Confluence might start sniffing around.
Shecould do the job. Will had told her she couldn’t go on camera, but there had been no time to talk about it. She didn’t exactly have many options here, desperate times and all that. Besides, this was a plan—get on camera and get out of Confluence.
“How long since you practiced your photog skills?” She tossed a notepad in her purse and zipped it closed.
Mischief flashed across Reuben’s face. “You’re going to scoop this, aren’t you?”
Yes, she was. An alligator in the freaking river meant she was absolutely going to scoop it. If they got some video, a few interviews, this would be a great story. The kind a reporter would add to a demo reel.
